shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

finding the narration incredibly annoying.

been wanting to read this for a while now, didn't quite live up to my expectations but i thought it was pretty good. interesting take on a dystopian story (though i would have loved more explanation on exactly how they add a shadow??). i did get incredibly annoyed by the kid honestly. she was way too pretentious and did not act like an actual kid (but the name Bear is awesome)

i have so many feelings about this book but am not sure words can fully describe them.
i didn't realize at first that this book was originally written in the 1950s--i typically don't really read old books (assumptions that they will be boring and hard to understand, etc), but upon realizing this while reading the introduction i still decided to give it a chance. im so glad i did. this book is a heartbreaking love story, where you have to see Aoyama drive away Chi-Chan, then eventually Chi-Chan chooses to return. I love that the introduction reminds you that these two characters are the colonizer and the colonized, because Taiwan Travelogue can never escape that context (and i don't think it should). there is so much incredible commentary on the fact that, to just describe the base idea, you need to ask someone if they want or need help before giving it. i love this dearly, im so glad i ended up reading it. also THE DESCRIPTIONS OF FOOD!!! god the descriptions and food writing were top notch, nothing else can compare

i really haven’t read much from transfemme authors (something im trying to change), but this was a great memoir. Dylan’s writing was fun and incredibly conversational, the only way i can describe reading this is that i imagine its the same feeling you would have laying on your bed kicking your feet and gossiping with a close friend

incredible writing, characters, art, everything. starman is just as funny as in Prokaryote Season (somehow i love this even more than PS). this is about wanting to make a bad world better and i feel that sentiment immensely. more weird trans/queer art!!!

interesting story, but too flowery of writing for me. also felt like i got tricked into reading a mystery :/

i offer you this advice: if you are like me and after starting this book, gave it the side eye and kinda are disliking it, i beg you KEEP GOING. it is definitely a slowburn and does not start off fast paced (it starts off as kinda your average historical fiction except for there being a dude inside a whale), but it gets incredible in the second half. the coolest maritime horror book i've ever read (idk that i've read many thus far, but this will probably be the coolest one i've read ever). again, a slow burn, but Emett Nahil did an incredible job at ramping up the suspense (

and god Isaiah and Essex are horrifying as a couple but that ending scene was so vivid, i love them!!! universe needs to let them be together!!!

i need to shake Essex around in a little jar, he's a creepy little man!!!)
this is basically if Our Flag Means Death was horror, which i never knew i needed until now

fyi this review is filled with spoilers

i really feel like the odd one out here for really disliking this book :/ as a dystopia it just plain doesn’t make sense to me. how is it so apocalyptic yet nasa, voting, the national guard, police, and the presidency itself still exist? it doesn’t line up.
also, the violence in here felt (to me at least) like it didn’t have much purpose after a while. every few pages someone is killed or raped or eaten, and Lauren (despite her hyperempathy) never seems to treat this as something horrible. just in general, her hyperempathy did not feature much. characters were flat and would just die without Lauren reacting much. her brother dies and is mentioned maybe one or two more times in the whole book, cory dies and is never mentioned again, and OH MY GOD I HATE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LAUREN AND BANKOLE. he is so gross

im hopefully going to be pursuing an autism diagnosis this summer (fingers crossed), so i’ve been reading a lot about autism and books by autistic people. i definitely connected with much of what paige wrote in this book. a lot of it is very intense and was difficult to listen to, but i’m glad i made it through and finished the book.

man this was wildly fascinating. it’s both a heist story and hobby drama to the extreme
it disappoints me a lot how resistant much of the fly-tying community (at least from how they were portrayed here) were to just,,, using cheaper and more common feathers. most of these people didn’t even fish!! the fancy rare feathers were never necessary!!
i thought how this was written was really captivating, i sped through the story of the heist itself (and i still feel bad for Long Nguyen. the poor guy :/)
all in all, as someone who basically never reads true crime: this was really cool